I decided to stay in for the day and not expose myself to the elements – neither the criminal ones nor the natural ones. The sun was bright for most of the day with some sparse clouds rolling around just to keep me from becoming too optimistic. I dozed a little, but mainly stayed awake trying to give some serious thought to my upcoming meeting with the maniacal psychopath. I wondered if that was a redundancy.
I got up for good around 4:30. I freshened up a bit. For me that’s washing my face with cold water and checking to be sure that both of my weapons were loaded and ready. A woman and her accessories.
I decided against driving into D.C. that time of day. I also decided it would be best if I had Sam remain in the motel room in Sterling. I fed him a mound of dry food and told him about my plan. He seemed content to remain behind, although I knew he preferred to accompany me just in case.
“She’ll be there. I won’t be alone.”
He barked once, our usual signal for agreement.
I took the Metro to the Union Station stop. I took the Orange Line from Vienna and changed Metro Center to the Red Line. I had previously called ahead to make reservations at B. Smith’s just to be certain I could get the table I wanted. Trusting Wilkerson was simply out of the question, so I made some arrangements beforehand. Be cautious, plan ahead, or die.
B. Smith’s is an upscale dining establishment with a slight bent toward Southern cuisine. To make myself feel more comfortably at home, I ordered a crab entrée made with grits. They also offered the more traditional shrimp and grits dish, but I was more inclined towards the crab. It turned out to be the correct choice. Yowza. Home sweet home.
I called Wilkerson just before I boarded the Red Line at Metro Central.
“You’re not giving me enough time,” he whined.
“If you’re not there by 6:15, I’m gone.”
I gave him the specifics and clicked off.
Wilkerson approached just before my crab-grits dish. I looked over his shoulders to see if I could spot any likely suspects who had accompanied him. I searched high and low. I could see no one in dark sunglasses and black suits. I didn’t spot any long barrels extending from the rooftops or opened windows either.
He sat down without my invitation.
“That looks good,” he said.
I tasted it and smiled. “Well, for once you are correct.”
“Do I have time to order something?”
“Suit yourself. I don’t plan on shooting you today, so you have plenty of time.”
The waitress came over for a drink order.
“Martini,” he said. “And a glass of water. And bring me a shrimp and grits entrée.”
He watched me take several bites of my crab dish. Wow. It was really good. A little better than the barbeque I ate last night.
“We need to come to terms with this thing,” he said after she walked away.
“Make me an offer,” I said and took another bite of my crab and grits. Except for present company, I was enjoying this meal. These people know how to cook. I could not for the life of me imagine their shrimp and grits being better than this.
“We’ll call a truce and forget this ever happened,” he said.
“So, you try to kill my friend Rosey, kidnap another friend, and send some goons after the rest of us in an effort to obliterate us from the planet, and now you’re just going to stop and walk away. You forget it and we forget it. Is that the long and short of your offer?”
“I think you have the gist of it.”
“Forgive my skepticism, but I don’t believe a word of it.”
“I need some information.”
“Might be the tip of the iceberg for what you need.”
“Does Washington know what was in that box he brought back from Thailand?”
“Yes.”
“Does he know what was on that drive?”
“Yes.”
“So he opened it and looked at the contents before he delivered it.”
“He’s too good a soldier for that. I told him about the flash drive and the contents.”
“You?” Thaddeus appeared to be genuinely surprised at my answer.
I took a couple of bites, chewed slowly and then drank some of my sweet iced tea.
“Moí,” I said.
“And how did you discover that information?”
“I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
“Don’t be cute.”
I ate some more crab-grits. The food was exquisite. Better than just good. I wanted to moan aloud to express complete satisfaction. I restrained the urge to do so.
“I think cute works for me… red hair, generally attractive, and a flair for words.”
“Women have a place, for sure. However, you are out of yours.”
“You don’t think I’d kill you?”
“Your file indicates that you are one of those legit detectives who thrives on behaving above board. Killing is not one of your traits, according to the records.”
“I had good raising. I do try to keep the law, most days. But that doesn’t mean I won’t shoot scum bags like you.”
“Is that what I am?”
“You have done nothing in the last several days to prove otherwise.”
I ate more of the delicious food in front of me. Before he could add to our going-nowhere conversation, his entrée arrived. He took a large bite but not all of it made it inside his mouth. A spot or two held fast to his chin.
“This is a good Southern dish,” he said while chewing with his mouth open. The exterior portion dropped from his chin to the table. Some residue remained.
Unsightly. Disgusting. The man was a tramp.
“They have a bent towards the South here,” I said as I looked away from the slob across from me.
“This shrimp is good,” he said.
“And the grits?”
“Not my favorite thing. Too something or other. Not sure what it is.”
“Another reason not to like you.”
“My Midwest heritage?”
“Naw, your questionable taste. Has nothing to do with where you’re from.”
I watched him poke around inside his dish. I assumed he was looking for shrimp that wasn’t attached to the grits. Good luck with that, bubba. I continued to enjoy mine while he searched his dish for the blended seafood.
“So, you know about the hologram,” he said.
“I do.”
“Why do you think I wanted it?”
“I have no idea. I just know that you were willing to kill Rosey because you thought he knew about it.”
“I figured he had opened the box and viewed the contents of the drive.”
“I told you he’s a better soldier than that.”
“Yeah, I guess so. My bad. But here’s the deal I’m offering – you two stay out of my way and forget all about this. I’ll back off and leave him alone. You have my word.”
Hmm. Thief. Kidnapper. Probably a murderer, but at least one attempted murder for sure. The word of a Washington bureaucrat? How far could I go with that one? My mama didn’t raise no fool.
“Your word’s not worth much to me, bubba.”
“Bubba?”
“What do you intend to do with the flash drive?”
“Not your business, Evans. But, since you asked, it’ll go back to Thailand where it belongs.”
“You don’t plan to make some counterfeit money?”
“The Thai Baht is not that spendable in the U.S.”
“But it could make you a wealthy man in Thailand,” I said.
“I have no interest in living in Thailand, especially after counterfeiting their currency. If they caught me, I can’t imagine what they would do to me.”
“It’s a thought worth harvesting,” I said and feigned a smile.
He grunted while I finished my entrée. He poked around some more in his without finding any more shrimp unattached to the grit-mixture. He dropped his fork and pushed the dish away. He took a quick swipe
across his mouth with his napkin missing entirely the residue still on his chin.
Wilkerson then downed his Martini.
“Do we have a deal?”
I stared at his chin and smiled. He looked odd.
“I don’t trust you at all,” I said.
“What will it take?”
“Give me the flash drive and I’ll see that it is returned to Thailand.”
He laughed. I knew my offer was worthless, but I told him what it would take. Still, if he had obliged, I would not have trusted him. Not one whit.
“You know I can make life miserable for you and Rosey.”
“Yeah, but it’ll cost you ultimately.”
“I have too many contacts in this town. I’ll find something to bring you both down. I won’t have to kill you. I’ll just have you locked away for a couple of decades or more.”
“Why are you so willing to back off from Rosey now?”
“I’m losing too many people. And that other friend, well, she’s something to be reckoned with.”
“Yeah, she is. Should I turn her loose on you?”
“I doubt that she can touch me,” he said.
“You wanna bet your life on that one?” I feigned another smile at his naïveté.
He sipped a little from his glass of water. He didn’t appear to be nervous, but I did wonder. Perhaps he held it inside.
“Is she here now?” he asked.
I pointed to a small red dot which suddenly appeared and was reflected on the salt shaker in the middle of our table. The dot was moving only slightly. It was an infrared target bead from a rifle. My friend had arrived. And her timing was impeccable.
He turned quickly and looked up and around, searching in vain for the location.
I noticed that the bead on the salt shaker disappeared. Her presence was noted and accounted for.
“You won’t find her but she’s here.”
“You wouldn’t shoot me in this facility,” he said without a lot of conviction.
“She’d shoot you anywhere. We’re serious about this whole business. You opened Pandora’s Box by coming after my friend. It caused us to engage in some serious research. You were stupid, Thad, very, very stupid. You picked on the wrong people. If you had simply just gone about your shady business, I doubt if anyone would have suspected you. You would have gotten away with it. Now, well, you opened the box and trouble crawled out. We’re coming after you, so prepare yourself. Use your contacts here in this city. It’s a little late to call off your dogs.”
I expected him to turn pale but he did not. He simply stared at me as if I were an abstract painting hanging in the National Gallery of Art.
“Your meeting place, you pay,” he said and tossed his napkin on top of the salt shaker where the infrared bead had been hovering moments earlier.
I secretly wished that Diamond had gone ahead and shot him. Perhaps I should not have had such thoughts. My mother would have disapproved, but then she was more Christian than I regarding such things as ridding the world of really bad people.
He stood up and I watched him walk away until he was completely out of my sight. I paid the bill and left in the opposite direction.
I’d say offhand that our meeting had not been too successful from his vantage.
29
Diamond was waiting on me in my motel room in Sterling. She was leaning her back against the headboard of the bed. Her long legs were stretched our in front of her with one of her sophisticated rifles resting comfortably across her lap. She was cleaning it. She was in her element, or so it seemed.
Sam was asleep at the foot of the bed resting comfortably next to Diamond’s long legs. He was asleep. His element. He did raise his beautiful black head, look at me, wag his tail once, and then return to Never Land immediately.
“You get around,” I said to her.
“Illusive and hard to hold.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised that she had found the motel where I had spent the night with Sam.
“Rogers contact you?” I said hoping that her answer would be yes. It would explain a lot. If she said no, then she would be more mysterious than even I could fathom. If she said no, then maybe she and David Blaine had something in common. Too much to deal with.
“I saw a message.”
Whew. I felt some relief, but I couldn’t explain her keen search-and-find methods since Rogers had no knowledge of my exact location in this motel. Even allowing for GPS, Diamond was scary.
“How did you know that red spot was mine and not one of his goons?” she said.
“He would not have had time to place a hit man. And only Rogers knew where I was meeting him. And I wouldn’t have seen the red dot unless I looked down at my own chest.”
“You might have figured wrong about that, you know. You do trust that computer a lot. Ever worry about hackers?”
“No. And yes, I do trust that computer.”
“What if the machine lost power and didn’t do what you needed at the time?”
“Good question. Battery backup,” I lied. I mostly lied. She did have a battery backup, but she also had multiple auxiliary power sources which supplied her with nonstop capabilities even in power outages. I had installed backups to backups to backups. Besides that, Uncle Walters about finished with a neat power source of sorts whereby Rogers would create her own power simply by working. Self-sustaining power. He was testing his creation and nearly ready to install it.
“And if someone blew up your apartment?”
“Yikes, that would be rough. She’d be gone.”
“Sounds like a personal relationship,” she said.
“You know what you said to me about those questions I asked you regarding family and pets?”
“Too personal.”
“Hold that thought regarding Rogers.”
“I can do that. Now, what’s next on our to-do list?” she asked.
Diamond had finished cleaning her weapon, put it back together in a less than a minute, and was now lying on the bed with her head resting on a pillow. Sam was still snoozing next to her.
“You and Sam seem to be copacetic.”
“He doesn’t talk much.”
“One of his better traits. However, he is intuitive.”
“Likely another excellent trait.”
“Helps me,” I said.
“Is he ever counter-intuitive?”
“Only you would ask such a thing.”
“Keeps me alive,” she said as she reached down and patted Sam on the head. He remained asleep. It was the first time I had ever seen her show any affection to my dog.
“Thinking about getting a canine partner?”
“No.”
“New firearm?”
“No.”
“You have a stash of guns and ammo hidden somewhere in the city?”
“Too much information,” she said. I could tell she meant that.
She moved to a sitting position on the side of the bed. She looked tired.
“You okay?”
“You have anything to drink?” she said.
“Hard or caffeine laden fizz?”
“Caffeine is good. I leave the hard to the idiots who should know better.”
“A tee totaling assassin, imagine that.”
“I have to remain at my peak all the time,” she said.
“Nothing in the fridge,” I said after opening and closing the small unit in my suite. “How about I make some coffee?”
“That’ll do. Hold the fizz on the coffee.”
I thought I detected a faint smile. It didn’t last long, so I could’ve been mistaken.
We sat in silence while the coffee pot created some not-so delicious brew for us. Sam shifted positions and moved closer to Diamond’s back. She was now sitting on the side of the bed. If I didn’t know better, I would say that the two of them were bonding. At least Sam was bonding with her. I wasn’t positive about her ability to bond with him. Or anyone. Sitting in a room with Sam and myself w
ere likely as close to bonding as she would ever get.
We drank our caffeine in the Styrofoam cups provided by the motel.
“You got a plan?” she asked.
“It would sound better if I said yes.”
“I’ll take that as a no.”
“Accurate.”
“What did Thaddeus Wilkerson want?” she said.
“More or less a truce.”
“Why?”
“I think you were too much for him.”
“Most times people arrive at that conclusion too late in life.”
I smiled and sipped my hot coffee. I missed my apartment and my coffee machine. Mine tasted better. Recent quote I saw said that life is too short for bad coffee. Seems appropriate.
“You believe him?” she said after a short period of silence.
“No, but I can’t figure his angle.”
“Stalling for more time, no doubt.”
“Might be that simple.”
“Yeah.”
“But he did just wrestle with a lioness and lose.”
“Down three. He has more. It wasn’t such a personal loss for him, you know.”
“Yeah. I get that as well. Makes me wonder what he’s up to,” I said.
“Who’s working with him?” she said.
“Rogers is looking into that. I’m waiting on her information as we sit and drink.”
“What would you do without that computer?”
“Unemployed or walking a beat in Norfolk.”
“You’d return to that profession?” her voice had a hint of surprise in it.
“Might have to, if circumstances developed. Something you didn’t know, huh?”
“Girl, I would say there is a great volume of stuff I do not know about you. I don’t overly research my intended targets. I find them, watch them, I study their daily routines to find a pattern, and then I do what I am paid to do.”
Out Jumps Jack Death: A Clancy Evans Mystery (Clancy Evans PI Book 8) Page 16